The nine most memorable quotes in Ted Cruz’s 21-hour speech

Sen. Ted Cruz finished a Senate floor speech today that lasted for 21 hours and 19 minutes. Cruz started speaking against the Affordable Care Act at 2:41 p.m. EST Tuesday, and with help from fellow Republicans who oppose Obamacare, went through the night and into this afternoon, when he had to yield the floor for regular Senate business.

Among the highlights of his speech was his tale of his father achieving the American dream and him reading Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” to his daughters as a bedtime story. Here are some more memorable quotes from his marathon speech.

1. “I intend to speak in opposition to ObamaCare, I intend to speak in support of defunding ObamaCare, until I am no longer able to stand, to do everything I can to help Americans stand together and recognize this grand experiment 3 ½ years ago is, quite simply, not working.”

2. “It is a little bit akin to the World Wrestling Federation, wrestling matches where it is all rigged. The outcome is predetermined. They know in advance who is going to win and lose and it is all for show.”

3. “Look, most Americans could not give a flying flip about a bunch of politicians in Washington. Who cares? You know, almost all of us are in cheap suits and have bad haircuts. Who cares?”

4. “One of the self-described fact checkers–and we may talk long enough that I talk a little bit about fact checkers, because that is a particularly pernicious bit of yellow journalism that has cropped up that lets journalists be editorial writers and pretend they are talking about objective facts, and basically conclude as a factual matter–not as a matter of opinion–and anyone who disagrees with them is objectively lying.”

5. “I will embarrassingly admit that I took the coward’s way out. I went and purchased some black tennis shoes…. I am not in my argument boots, and I will confess I do feel pretty embarrassed by that.”

6. “If this body were listening to the people, we would have 100 Senators concerned about all of the Americans being hurt by ObamaCare and here at any hour of the night ready to act to stop it. Because no one wants to live in their parent’s basement forever. Because Reagan once said, you can’t be for big government, big bureaucracy and still be for the little guy.”

7. “To be honest, the approach by ObamaCare defenders is an awful lot of table pounding. It is an awful lot of “let’s discuss anything other than what, in fact, happened.” Pick up any newspaper and it is talking about this issue. What will the reporters, the political reporters in Washington, DC, write about? I think some may be frustrated because they wanted to be Hollywood gossip reporters because they covered these issues as a battle of personalities.”

8. “If we go back centuries, we see that every generation of Americans has been able to give to the next generation a brighter future, greater prosperity, greater opportunity. We are on the verge of being the first generation of Americans not to do so. If we want to put our fingers on the discontent so many Americans feel, that goes right to the heart of it: What we are doing in Washington isn’t working.”

9. “Here in Washington we pass million-dollar bills and billion-dollar bills no one has ever read, without even voting on them. We call it unanimous consent. It is only unanimous because we do not let the American people know. It would be very interesting to bring 100 of our constituents in on any unanimous consent that is spending $1 billion here, $1 billion there, and see what our constituents think about that. The system is designed deliberately to hide what we are doing.”